Increasing numbers of Internet appliances ("appliances") are appearing and supplanting some of the Internet accessibility functions that have traditionally been provided by personal computers/workstations (PCs). For example, individual appliances that provide email, music downloads, radio, and web browsing as well as other functions are presently available.
While such appliances typically do not exhibit the full range of hardware and software found on most PCs, they are often implemented in accordance with the same general architecture: a processor, a memory, an operating system, and an application program. The processor is generally highly optimized for arithmetic and data processing and includes an instruction processing pipeline and floating-point unit. However, many of the performance-enhancing features of the processor are unused during communication. The operating system is sometimes an adaptation of a general purpose operating system for a PC, with the appliance operating system not being fully optimized for network communications. Thus, the appliances may be relatively inexpensive to engineer, but inefficient in terms of resource utilization and performance.
Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are frequently used in communications, data processing, data storage and other applications. The appealing characteristics of FPGAs are speed that approaches that of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and programmability for design flexibility. As compared to a stored program processor arrangement, however, the re-programmability of an FPGA is less convenient. For example, to upgrade a program in a stored program processor arrangement, the operating system can be used to replace a program file. Thus, in the context of an Internet appliance, a program may be upgraded over the Internet. An FPGA, in contrast, generally requires special hardware to provide a configuration bitstream to the FPGA. Thus, while the speed of FPGAs provides an advantage for use in Internet appliances, the traditional methods for reconfiguring FPGAs have disadvantages.
A system and method that address the aforementioned problems, as well as other related problems, are therefore desirable.